Setting the record straight

Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong, Malaysian Times

I READ with aghast and disappointment a press statement on Aug 3 issued by the Higher Education Section of the Ministry of Education (MoE) that refuted the pointers I had made regarding this year’s intake of students into public institutes of higher learning (IPTA).

Referring to the claim by the MoE that only 39 students with a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 4.0 failed to receive any offers from IPTA, I hope the MoE will not oversimplify the problem.

MoE’s statement is truly unjust to students who scored the perfect CGPA of 4.0 but were offered courses that were not their chosen option, more so when the applicants had clearly indicated their interest by choosing critical courses as their top priorities during the on-line application.

In addition, MoE did not take into account the problem encountered by CGPA 4.0 students who applied for Dentistry and Pharmacy. The existing system requires students to select at least six options (two courses from research universities and four courses from non-research universities.)

The number of existing IPTAs which offer these courses (Dentistry and Pharmacy) is fewer than six, thereby forcing students to apply for other courses in the system.

The Higher Education Section of the MoE has been evasive and did not look into this matter comprehensively, thus leaving top scoring CGPA 4.0 students in a serious dilemma.

With regard to my alleged claim that “only 19%  of Chinese students received offers to IPTAs, but many Chinese students with a CGPA of 4.0 did not receive any offer”, this is utterly baseless. I have never uttered such a remark before.

What I had said was, “in the past four years, the enrolment rate of Chinese applicants fell from 92% to 88.2%, followed by 86.4% to only 75% this year.” The above data was obtained from the MoHE or Ministry of Higher Education then.

I had mentioned that before the government first implemented the meritocracy system, the percentage of successful Chinese applicants entering IPTAs was 32.3% but this year, the percentage has fallen until 19%. Can the MoE deny these facts? Again, the statistics which I had referred to were those which were published by the MoE.

The MoE claimed only 1% of students with a CGPA of 4.0 did not receive offers and MoE even listed out the reasons including “the applicants’ having stated they would decline programmes other than the ones applied for, and being at the low merit level as the co-curricular activities’ marks were low.”

I believe the MoE does not comprehend the points raised by our MCA Youth i.e. there is a difference in the evaluation system for co-curricular activities between the STPM and Matriculation applicants.

Also, the information as prepared by MCA proves that there are at least two students with a CGPA of 4.0 who are willing to accept courses which were not selected by them. Again, they failed to obtain any course. Can the MoE kindly provide an explanation on this?

For the past 10 years, MCA Youth Education Bureau has been helping MoE and MoHE to conduct out-reach programmes and providing guidance talks to students on improving their opportunities of entry into IPTAs based on the criteria set by the MoHE/MoE.

We had explained the eight selection criteria to hundreds of thousands of students since 2000. If the intake results (reality) do not match the selection criteria set, MoE owes the students a reasonable explanation as to how their applications have failed to fulfill the MoE’s requirements.

MoE had  failed to furnish any explanation as to how students with a lower CGPA were offered critical courses as opposed to top scorers with a CGPA of 4.0.

Moreover, MCA Youth highlighting the deteriorating trend of the percentage of Chinese students into IPTA was not given adequate attention. Another issue is that the students are unhappy to see the number of places for critical courses on a declining trend and sad to say, MoE or MoHE has never come up with any reasonable explanation.

MCA Youth hopes to help students resolve their problems. The MCA Youth Education Bureau is willing to sit and discuss with the MoE on how to overcome this situation, and we hope that the IPTA intake issue will be settled once and for all.

Meanwhile, I wish to inform that the problem addressed by MCA Youth was not deliberately manufactured by our wing. I would like to remind MoE that the rakyat hold grievances with the student admission system and MCA Youth is merely assisting students to resolve this problem.

I wish to reiterate that when I served as the Deputy Minister of Education from March 2008 to May 2013, IPTA intakes did not come under the jurisdiction of the MoE but were under the purview of the MoHE.

I wish to add that when I first helmed the MCA Youth Education Bureau in 2000, a dispute broke out with then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamad. However, after holding a dialogue session with the Minister, MoE then solved the problem immediately.

Therefore, if MoE can return to dialogue, this will indeed provide a positive outcome for the affected students.

For instance, last year, in the capacity as MCA Youth chief as well as being the Deputy Minister, I spoke up for many top-scorers (CGPA 4.0) regardless of race, thus assisting them to obtain approvals from the Cabinet in granting RM49.3mil in scholarships to help them get enrolled into private institutes of higher learning (IPTS) to pursue their desired courses.

The students have toiled for years to achieve excellent results. Equally, their proud parents have also sacrificed so much all these years to nurture such bright students. People’s futures are at stake. Do not trivialise the seriousness of this issue.

(Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong was Deputy Education Minister from March 2008 to May 2013. His the MCA Youth national chairman and also heads the MCA education bureau. Dr Wee is also Ayer Hitam MP.)